Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 65
• Total blog posts published: 420

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini, which explains the psychology behind people saying yes and doing what others ask of them as well as how psychology can be used to influence and persuade people
• Added five books I read in 2023 to the library on this site—see more here

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books I read in 2023 to the library on this site—see more here
• Create a digest of one biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred seventy was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

·      No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• Ben Thompson founded Stratechery, a “subscription-based blog, newsletter and podcast that provides analysis of the strategy and business side of technology and media.” Stratechery’s subscription model is what inspired the creation of Substack (according to Ben, Substack said in its seed deck that it’s Stratechery in a box). His platform is wildly successful, with tens of thousands of paying subscribers. Many tech CEOs subscribe to his blog, and he has interviewed CEOs such as Mark Zuckerberg (see here). The core of his business is written blog posts. These posts, or their content, are distributed in various ways (email, RSS, SMS, etc.) so subscribers can consume in the way that’s easiest for them. Ben teamed up with Automattic to create custom software that powers all this. The software is called Passport. It’s not available for purchase just yet, but they’re registering interest via their waitlist.
• According to Dan Martell, a personal brand can be thought of as a combination of reach and reputation. If lots of people know who you are and think positively of you, everything you want to do becomes easier. It can be a force multiplier of growth, especially with the distribution of entrepreneurs’ products and services. See here for Dan’s explanation of this concept in a segment of an interview he recently gave.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Last weekend was a holiday weekend, and I challenged myself to add five of my old reads to the library on this site (see here). It took longer than I’d planned (see here), but it forced me to review the notes and highlights in books I read in 2023, which was helpful and much needed. I want to regularly add more old reads to the library and review their highlights.

I know myself. If it’s not a regular habit, the chances of it happening are much lower. So, I’m going to experiment with a new challenge this weekend. If it works, I’ll keep doing it every weekend, hopefully. The challenge: add two old reads to my library by Monday.

It’s a simple goal, but it involves a lot of work behind the scenes. I’m hoping I can knock it all out this weekend, learn from it, and repeat it next weekend.

Wish me luck!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 64
• Total blog posts published: 413

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read A Short History of Financial Euphoria, a recounting of history’s most famous financial bubbles—from 1600s’ Tulip Mania to the 1980s.  

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add five more books to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred sixty-nine was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• A first-generation entrepreneur who has had some success but is trying to scale further: This is a profile of an entrepreneur with unique problems. More thoughts on this here.
• X (formerly Twitter) bios matter. They help establish credibility. People are more likely to respond to cold DMs if your bio shows you’re credible.
• Google Tag Manager (GTM) is up and running on the blog. GTM allows for much more granular tracking of actions and events on a website than Google Analytics. But before I can make any changes based on GTM data, I need to increase the traffic to this blog.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

I like to use my holidays to unwind, but I also enjoy challenging myself. When I do, sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail (I chronically overestimate what I can accomplish). Regardless of the outcome, it’s fun to have a challenge to work toward. I always learn something during the process.

I haven’t done a Memorial Day challenge before, but I want to experiment this year. I’m proud of the library section I added to this site. It includes all the books I read in 2024 and 2025. Now I want to expand it to include all books I’ve read over the last decade or so. I think it’d be cool to have all the books I’ve consumed and found helpful listed in one place. It’s a longer-term project and I haven’t gotten started on it yet. I want to change that.

My goal for this holiday weekend is to add five books to my digital library by Tuesday. These will be books I read before 2024.

That’s it. Super simple. Wish me luck.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 63
• Total blog posts published: 406

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way, a biography about Ted Turner, the cable and media entrepreneur who created CNN, TBS, and several other cable channels, covering his early journey through 1980
• Tagged specific actions on my blog (with the help of my buddy) to start collecting data via Google Tag Manager
• Created the brand journey for this project (learn more about this framework here)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred sixty-eight was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

·      No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• Instead of starting a newsletter from scratch for this project, I could acquire one at a reasonable price at places like Duuce, a marketplace to buy or sell newsletters.
• Gary Hoover is a serial entrepreneur and walking encyclopedia of business history. He has studied 35,000 business books and had a collection of over 70,000 books before a tragic fire. He sold BOOKSTOP to Barnes and Nobles. He took small business information publisher Hoover’s, Inc. public via IPO in 1999 and sold it to Dun & Bradstreet for $117 million. He’s the founder and executive director of American Business History, an interesting resource. I learned a lot from this interview he gave.
• The brand-journey framework exercise was very helpful. I like starting with a goal and working backward, so it was right up my alley. It made the concept of building a brand make logical sense to me and provided me with something that will make decision-making and saying no to things that don’t align easy. For a more detailed explanation of the framework, see here.
• Google Tag Manager (GTM) allows for much more granular tracking of actions and events on a website than Google Analytics. It’s more involved to set up, and I needed someone with experience in both tools to help me set up GTM. But the granularity of the data should be well worth the effort.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 62
• Total blog posts published: 399

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Pre-Recorded History, a biography about Andre Blay, the entrepreneur who created the home movie industry and paved the way for Netflix, Blockbuster, and others
• Created an opportunity solution tree for this project using the framework I read about in Continuous Discovery Habits
• Ordered the books I need for my 2025 Summer Uncomfortable Challenge (see here)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Tag specific actions on each page of this site to start collecting data in Google Tag Manager
• Complete a brand journey framework for this project (learn more here)

Asks:

• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred sixty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No struggles this week.

What I learned:

• The International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad is a university in India that’s well known for its curriculum around natural-language processing. Alumni and students from this school could be a good fit for my project.
• The opportunity solution tree framework in Continuous Discovery Habits is helpful. It’s a great way to lay out customers’ mini pain points and brainstorm solutions that can help resolve them. It helps you determine which pain points are the highest priority and can be solved in a way that aligns with your business objectives. The book doesn't say this, but the most important and highest level is a major customer problem or need. Adding this to the framework helped me tremendously and focused everything on the customer’s pain.
• Capturing, recalling, and using what I learn from mediums like YouTube to solve problems is just as challenging as it is with books. See more here.
• The brand journey framework is a good way to think about how to create a brand intentionally. You start with your goal and work backward to today by answering four questions:
  
  • 1. What outcome do you want, or what’s your motivation for doing something?
  • 2. What do you have to be known for to get #1 to happen?
  • 3. What would you have to do to be known for the thing in #2?
  • 4. What do I have to learn right now to do the thing in #3?
  • For a more detailed explanation, see here.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.